Clarification around 301 redirects.
-
I’ve come across numerous blogs recently that suggest that SEOs should NOT do bulk re-directs to a category page. This has come as something of a surprise (doh!!) and I feel like I should already know this. It does seem like there is lots disagreement here so I thought that I’d ask what people’s opinions were to make sure that I get my thinking straight. I've read all the main Moz blog posts on this topic and, although really useful, they've left me none the wiser around a few specific questions.
Here’s some more detail about the situation. We’re currently consolidating a lot of content into a main blog, which will be the focal point of new blogs posts that are created. This is different to the past, where we tended to create separate blogs for different products on separate domains. I’m currently considering how we move content across from one the older blogs to this new blog (which will soon sit on a subfolder of our main domain).
I have three (!) questions:
1) Could you confirm that doing bulk re-directs a category page is bad? I already know that doing them all to the homepage is an error.
2) Should I re-direct the home page of the old blog on a separate domain to the relevant category page on the new site? The category page is related, but does not cover the EXACT topic. The category page covers our replacement product offering. It I shouldn't do this, where should I re-direct the old blog domain to?
3) I’ve recommended that we set up 301 redirects on a one-to-one basis, redirecting each piece of content to its new location on the old site. What about content that has been earmarked for removal and for which there is no obvious alternative? My previous recommendation has been to re-direct these pages to the most relevant category page on the new blog. Would it be better to let this 404 or, as an alternative, create a custom 404 for the users on the new blog highlighting the new content that we offer?
Any help would be appreciated
-
Thanks for your reply Monica. The blog is a landing page where the separate blog posts were listed, which is what I think you are suggesting so I'll go ahead and recommend that we do the re-directs to the corresponding page.
Thank you all for your replies - it's helped to get my thinking right
-
I agree with everyone here. But I do have some separate thoughts.
Bulk redirects aren't negative if they are done correctly. For example, I just moved a website that had about 1000 discontinued products. As opposed to losing those valuable pages, we redirected them to the corresponding category pages or to the replacement products. The 600 or so links that had to be redirected to a category aren't going to hurt my site. It will help my customers who are looking for those products, however. A client would probably rather land on a page that says "this product is no longer available, here are the replacements" than a 404 error page.
In the case of a blog, it is a lot better to redirect each blog to its new home. For blogs that no longer exist, I would redirect them to the corresponding category. No one likes to hit a 404 page, and if there is a chance that someone could land on a page that no longer exists, it is better to have them get to somewhere on your site.
As far as your blog's home page, is that a separate category on your site or is your entire site a blog? If your page was just a landing page where your blogs were listed, then you should redirect to the corresponding page on the new site, like Jonathan suggested.
-
- I'm going to say it depends on the scenario. In real estate, or automotives, online auctions, retail, basically any industry that cycles through inventory with no guarantee that listing will return - I say it is good to do bulk redirects. Better to send your users to a page with closely related product offerings than a 404, right? Now, I wouldn't do all of them to the homepage or the highest level child. Instead, do them to the lowest level child folder.
So, for example, if your store no longer carries a certain product, but you do still sell products from the vendor... then redirect a URL like website.com/product-category/product-vendor/product-abc123 to /product-category/product-vendor/.
-
Did you keep any of the content from that old blog? I might suggest redirecting to a landing page with your most popular content related to the old product offering, and then also adding links to the replacement offering and its helpful content.
-
Similar to what I suggested in no. 1, I think I would redirect to the most relevant category page on the new blog. A custom 404 isn't a bad idea, either, but I think it's always best to avoid having any search engine log a 404.
-
I'll keep it short:
1. Doing bulk redirects is bad, because you will not have relevancy between your links.
2. Redirect your old homepage to the page that is the most relevant to that on your new site. It can be the homepage on your new site or maybe it is a product page.
3. Redirect them to the most relevant pages.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
301 redirect to avoid duplicate content penalty
I have two websites with identical content. Haya and ethnic Both websites have similar products. I would like to get rid of ethniccode I have already started to de-index ethniccode. My question is, Will I get any SEO benefit or Will it be harmful if I 301 direct the below only URL’s https://www.ethniccode/salwar-kameez -> https://www.hayacreations/collections/salwar-kameez https://www.ethniccode/salwar-kameez/anarkali-suits - > https://www.hayacreations/collections/anarkali-suits
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | riyaaaz0 -
Changing URL structure of date-structured blog with 301 redirects
Howdy Moz, We've recently bought a new domain and we're looking to change over to it. We're also wanting to change our permalink structure. Right now, it's a WordPress site that uses the post date in the URL. As an example: http://blog.mydomain.com/2015/01/09/my-blog-post/ We'd like to use mod_rewrite to change this using regular expressions, to: http://newdomain.com/blog/my-blog-post/ Would this be an appropriate solution? RedirectMatch 301 /./././(.) /blog/$1
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | IanOBrien0 -
Url rewrite & 301 redirects
Hi all I am having some issues rearding url rewrites and 301 redirects with 1 and 1 hosting and am unsure of the best approach. The website is a custom made shopping cart system with categories and products. The current urls for categories are : index.php?l=product_list&c=1 The new url format required is : /banner-stands The current urls for products are : index.php?l=product_detail&c=1&p=1 The new url format required is : /banner-stands/banner-stand Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | vividwebdesign0 -
301 doesn't redirect a page that ends in %20, and others being appended with ?q=
I have a product page that ends /product-name**%20** that I'm trying to redirect in this way: Redirect 301 /products/product-name%20 http://www.site.com/products/product-name And it doesn't redirect at all. The others, those with %20, are being redirected to a url hybrid of old and new: http://www.site.com/products/product-name**?q=old-url** I'm using Drupal CMS, and it may be creating rules that counter my entries.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Brocberry0 -
301 redirects and Blogger - moving blog
Is there any way to add 301 redirects to individual posts on a blogger-hosted blog? We're getting ready to finally move our blog off of Blogger and onto our own webserver. We're probably going to use BlogEngine.net to run it. right now the blog is located at blog.MySite.com. We're probably going to move it to MySite.com/Blog. We don't have any really popular posts and we only really get ~10 visits a day on about 70 posts. Just trying to figure out the best way to handle this without inadvertently shooting myself in the foot.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | _JP_0 -
Duplicate Title Tags & Duplication Meta Description after 301 Redirect
Today, I was checking my Google webmaster tools and found 16,000 duplicate title tags and duplicate meta description. I have investigate for this issue and come to know about as follow. I have changed URL structure for 11,000 product pages on 3rd July, 2012 and set up 301 redirect from old product pages to new product pages. Google have started to crawl my new product pages but, De-Indexing of old URLs are quite slower. That's why I found this issue on Google webmaster tools. Can anyone suggest me, How can I increase ratio of De-Indexing for old URLs? OR any other suggestions? How much time Google will take to De-Index old URLs from web search?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0 -
Choose of destination for a 301 redirection
Hi, I had a website paris-football.com which ranked quite well on specific request as 'paris football" and "paris foot". I decided 2 months ago to stop this website as I had no time to update it and it was quite rubish in terms of content and make a redirection to a better quality website. I decided to redirect to the deep url http://www.sportytrader.com/paris-foot.php . The destination Url has not beneft from the redirection and has even seen its rankings drop since the redirection. do you think that it would have been better to redirect to the Home Page http://www.sportytrader.com ? Do you think that I can still change the destination url ? Thanks a lot for your help,
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jarnac0 -
301 or What?
Can someone please tell me the 100% correct way to set this up. Would I be right to set up a site this way... type in the browser..."example.com" and it re directs to "www.example.com. or, if i type in "example.com" it goes to example.com. or if I type in "www.example.com" it goes to "example.com"? or, type in "www.example.com" and it goes to "example.com" wouldn't most site link to a "www" version? PS whay isn;t the correct way set up by our HOST.? They should know what is most beneficial? Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEObleu.com0